Letters to the Editor

Thomas C. Boysen's eagerness to increase educational accountability
("Support naep's Expansion; End the Tyranny of Patchwork Testing", Oct.
10, 1990) could quickly destroy a resource that has taken more than 25
years to build.

While the National Assessment of Educational Progress may prove to
be an excellent accountability vehicle, we don't yet know whether
expansion will provide the desired result or what effect this
additional role would have on naep itself.

As a former naep project officer, I feel it is better for the
Congress to wait for a few crucial answers than to hastily send the
program in what may be an irreversible and regrettable direction.

Despite pressures to do otherwise, the Congress did not authorize a
wholesale expansion of naep. It funded an experiment and a project to
evaluate the results of that experiment. This experiment and evaluation
will answer two key questions: 1) Will accountability through naep have
the desired effect on education? and 2) How will expansion affect naep
itself?

Clearly, Mr. Boysen believes that nationally collected local data
will provide schools, districts, and states with the information they
need "to put things right." While some may need the federal government
to tell them whether things are right in their schools, we don't yet
know how many superintendents, board members, principals, and other
educators need that additional information.

More importantly, we have no idea whether such information will lead
to positive action. At most, naep can only help pinpoint areas for
improvement; it will not prescribe remedies. Since we don't know
whether basic accountability is lacking, and since we haven't tested
the theory that more accountability will lead to improved learning, we
don't really know whether an expanded naep will improve education.

Providing school-, district-, and state-level information is a
radical departure from naep's past role. Naep has built its reputation
by developing a quality database, analyzing trends over time, and
addressing a limited number of policy issues.

Making naep a high-stakes test, expanding it from a modest national
sample of 30,000 students, and altering its content could seriously
jeopardize the quality of newly collected data, the ability to analyze
trends over time, and the credibility of the project. Prudence dictates
waiting to see if the action will have the desired effects.

Rather than hastily expanding an existing program, we need to
examine our goals, how we can achieve those goals, and the associated
costs. It may very well be time to change naep and send it in a new
direction. It may, however, be better to develop new, additional
programs to serve different purposes. Naep has earned an excellent
reputation and maybe it can serve all the roles expected of it. But
maybe it can't.

Lawrence M. Rudner lmp Associates Chevy Chase, Md.

To the Editor:

In his Commentary ("The Mythology of the Marketplace in School
Choice," Oct. 17, 1990) Dennis L. Evans seems to miss the point of the
nationwide discussion stimulated by the publication of John Chubb and
Terry Moe's Politics, Markets, and America's Schools.

Mr. Evans creates a straw man by asserting that the discussion of
parental choice and markets centers around the notion "that parental
choice and the resultant competition among schools will lead to lasting
generational progress in public education." He then presents his
reasons why competition among schools would not be desirable.

In fact, the nationwide discussion centers around the empirical
evidence showing that bureaucracies, which are an inevitable result of
the democratic control of public education, stifle the effectiveness of
schools. Market control of schools, as contrasted with democratic
control, would promote quality education because it would tend to
reduce the size of the bureaucracy, not because it would stimulate
competition.

Indeed, released from the constraints of bureaucracy, less effective
schools could adopt more easily the effective practices of "competing"
schools, making schools more uniform than they are now.

Maurice E. Lucas Gainesville, Fla.

To the Editor:

Dennis L. Evans does a serious disservice to those of us who believe
that parent choice must play an important part in the effort to upgrade
our public schools. Instead of analysis, he offers name calling (choice
advocates are labeled as "gurus," "zealots," and "politicians") and
broadsides (reformers are promoting "faddism," "hysteria," and
"hoopla"). Such is hardly the hallmark of reasoned discussion.

He ignores the fact that choice has been a fact of life in American
education for a long time. Parents who can afford it live in certain
neighborhoods so as to gain access to quality public schools. While Mr.
Evans believes that parents cannot make such choices wisely, millions
of parents apparently disagree. Choice is not new. What is new is the
notion that parents of more limited means--including most of the middle
class and all of the poor--should enjoy it as well.

The issue is not "will choices be made about school quality?" but
rather "who will make the choices?" Mr. Evans is convinced that parents
are not competent to choose. He implies that elected legislators and
school-board members are unqualified as well. That leaves all of the
choosing, presumably, up to school administrators. Somehow, that
doesn't strike me as the wave of the future.

Beyond what common sense should tell us, there is growing evidence
that schools whose first allegiance is to parents who have power to
choose do a better job than schools that serve similar populations as
captive audiences. If we educators are as concerned about quality
learning as we appear to be about our own authority, tenure, and
salaries, we will stop sending up rhetorical smoke screens and start
dealing with what works.

Stephen C. Tracy Superintendent of Schools New Milford, Conn.

To the Editor:

The Commentary by Dennis L. Evans, extolling the virtues of
professional educators and revealing parents as the know-nothings they
are, was certainly enlightening.

How nice to have Mr. Evans explode the myths that competition
improves quality, that corporate America knows how to get a job done,
that parents make wise choices, and that non-professionals might know
something about education.

Perhaps he can now explode the myth that Lincoln was our 16th
President. Of course, that one is not quite as well-known, especially
among public-school graduates.

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